rob's index

The Last Good Year

2011-07-25T07:46:00.000-07:00

My post-mother creative non-fiction work-in-progress:

Crossouts sustain me now. I search out and cherish them like old photographs of my mother in happier times. It may be a stage of grieving that will pass. It may be I’ll never again think of sentences unshadowed in this way. It has changed me. Now I too am someone who knows marks.

Here is an epitaph for my mother I found on p. 19 of the Fitzwilliam Manuscript of Virginia Woolf’s Women and Fiction:

such
abandon ~~Obviously it is impossible, I thought, looking into these~~
ment ~~foaming waters, to~~
such ~~compare the living with the dead make any comparison~~
rapture ~~compare them.~~

Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours

First section:

Second section: house: a (tiny) memoir;

Third section: The Last Good Year; The Last Good Year; The Last Good Year; The Last Good Year; The Last Good Year; The Last Good Year; The Last Good Year; The Last Good Year;

12 or 20 (small press) questions (third series):

2010-03-22T09:20:00.000-07:00

Conducted by rob mclennan and Lisa Pasold, this new series of “12 or 20 questions” (originally based on mclennan’s own first and second series of interviews with writers) is a response to a conversation between mclennan (founder/coordinator of the ottawa small press book fair) and Pasold (current co-coordinator of the Toronto Small Press Fair) after the fall 2009 edition of the Toronto fair, held at the Gladstone Hotel. Over drinks, the two colluded to work a series of interviews with purveyors of small and micro-press, whether chapbook or book publishers, or editors/publishers of magazines, journals or zines. Much thanks to the Gladstone Hotel, who originally provided drinks and the opportunity, and Open Book Toronto, where a number of these pieces have been featured.

; Andrew Steeves on Gaspereau Press, Kentville NS: January 29, 2012 ; Dawn Marie Kresan on Palimpsest Press, Kingville ON: November 15, 2011 ; Scott Sweeney on Grey Book Press, Tallahassee FL: October 14, 2011 ; Spencer Gordon on Ferno House, Toronto ON: October 4, 2011 ; Jaime Robles on Woodland Editions, San Francisco CA/Exeter UK: September 22, 2011 ; Rena Rosenwasser and Patricia Dienstfrey on Kelsey Street Press: Berkeley CA: August 31, 2011 ; Rachel Moritz, WinteRed: Minneapolis MN: August 11, 2011 ; Maxine Chernoff and Paul Hoover, New American Writing: Mill Valley, CA: August 5, 2011 ; Rupert Loydell, Smallminded Books: Cornwall UK: July 31, 2011 ; Brian Teare, Albion Books: Philadelphia, PA: July 22, 2011 ; Amanda Ackerman + Harold Abamowitz, eohippus labs: Los Angeles, CA: July 5, 2011 ; Vincent Ponka, Emmerson Street Press, Northwestern ON: July 4, 2011 ; Karen Randall, Propolis Press, Northampton MA: April 19, 2011 ; Eric Elshtain, Beard of Bees Press, Chicago Il: April 4, 2011 ; Jen Tynes, Horse Less Press, Denver CO: March 14, 2011 ; John Calabro, Quattro Books, Toronto ON: February 27, 2011 ; Ken Edwards, Reality Street Editions, England: February 12, 2011 ; Jason Dewinetz, Greenboathouse Press, Vernon BC: February 3, 2011 ; kemeny babineau, Laurel Reed Books, Mt. Pleasant ON: January 11, 2011 ; derek beaulieu, NO Press, Calgary AB: January, 3, 2011 ; Kyle Schlesinger, Cuneiform Press, Buffalo NY: December 29, 2010 ; Lary Bremner (Timewell), Obvious Epiphanies Press, Japan: December 14, 2010 ; Rolf Maurer, New Star Books, Vancouver BC: November 30, 2010 ; J.A. Tyler, Mud Luscious Press: September 10, 2010 ; Meredith Quartermain, Nomados, Vancouver BC: August 3, 2010 ; Brian Clements, Firewheel Editions/sentence magazine, Danbury CT: July 26, 2010 ; Edward Smallfield, Apogee Press, Barcelona Spain/Berkeley CA: June 16, 2010 ; Dave Proctor, Wooden Rockets Press, Toronto ON: June 11, 2010 ; Antonio D'Alfonso, Guernica Editions, Montreal QC: June 5, 2010 ; Caleigh (intern), The Porcupine's Quill, Inc., Erin ON: May 25, 2010 ; Christophe Casamassima, Furniture Press, Baltimore MD: May 22, 2010 ; Ralph Alfonso, Bonzo Beat Books, Montreal QC: May 18, 2010 ; Jenny Penberthy, The Capilano Review, Vancouver BC: May 6, 2010 ; William Allegrezza, Moira, Chicago Il: April 29, 2010 ; Anita Lahey, Arc magazine, Montreal QC: April 24, 2010 ; Kitty McKay Lewis, Brick Books, London ON: April 18, 2010 ; Mark McCawley, Greensleeve Editions, Edmonton AB: April 15, 2010 ; The Workhorsery, Toronto ON: April 13, 2010 ; Cameron Anstee, Apt. 9 Press, Ottawa ON: April 6, 2010 ; Angela Carr, Tente, Montreal QC: April 4, 2010 ; Jenna Butler, Rubicon Press, Edmonton AB: March 30, 2010 ; Janet Vickers, Lipstick Press, Gabriola Island BC: March 26, 2010 ; Amanda Earl, AngelHousePress, Ottawa ON: March 22, 2010 ;

12 or 20 questions, second series

2009-06-01T07:58:00.000-07:00

From September 2007 to June 2008, to correspond with my time in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, I asked some two hundred writers from North America and beyond a series of similar questions, to see what their answers might be. The result was one hundred and seventy-five responses by one hundred and seventy-five poets, fiction and non-fiction authors from Canada, The United States and England, stretched out over a period of nine or ten months, ending with my own answers to same. Being that I an engaged with a number of writers in Ottawa, I tried to interview as many of them as possible, and as many in Alberta as well, working to learn the community around me in Edmonton, during my tenure west. Much to my surprise, some of the first series of interviews have been taught in University courses, and a couple were even reprinted in a recent issue of Montreal’s Matrix magazine, thanks to editors Andy Brown and Jon Paul Fiorentino. Some have suggested there should be a book version of the series, but why, I wonder, when they’re all already online? And who would want to publish a collection of literary interviews that could run into the hundreds of pages?

This second series, created to correspond with an upcoming period of Toronto activity, is an altered version of those same questions. The goal is the same, to see the range of answers from poets, fiction and non-fiction writers, aiming for a completely different set of authors from the original series, as well as a variety of new questions to replace the original “non-sequitor” question thirteen, provided by Lainna Lane El Jabi. The original question thirteen was lifted from Ellen Degeneres, speaking to David Letterman on his Late Show in late August 2007 about being a talk-show host, and not necessarily caring about their new movie, new television program, new project; sometimes you just want to ask them, she told him, when’s the last time you ate a pear? To replace this question, Lainna has provided a series of about a dozen new questions, which will change randomly from author to author.

Thanks to Lainna for providing new questions, and to Clelia Scala and Amy Logan Holmes at Open Book Toronto and Brian Fawcett at Dooney's Cafe, for publishing some of these interviews on-line as well.

house: a (tiny) memoir

2008-02-04T14:37:00.001-08:00

a work-in-progress of memoir pieces about Glengarry County.

We are all governed by what we were as children. Therefore, we tend to refocus again and again on familiar things.
— Michael Ondaatje, Brick #79

THE LOCAL IS NOT a place but a place in a given man — what part of it he has been compelled or else brought by love to give witness to his own mind. And that is THE form, that is, the whole thing, as whole as it can get.
— Robert Creeley, “A Note on the Local,” A Quick Graph

12 or 20 questions: archive

2007-09-04T17:37:00.001-07:00

"12 or 20 questions" is a series of interviews with Canadian and American (etcetera) poets and fiction writers through a series of core questions (with slight variation between authors) conducted by rob mclennan, and started to coincide with his tenure as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta in Edmonton from the beginning of September, 2007 to the end of May, 2008.